Kansas Weather Anchor Evacuates As Tornadoes Hit Wichita

While the Moore, Oklahoma tornado is dominating the news cycle–rightfully so–it’s easy to forget about the weather damage that occurred on Sunday in Wichita, Kansas. While the devastation pales in comparison, the fact is, when a “massive” tornado hits, it’s hard to forget. To help illustrate the chaos nature can cause when it decides to unleash the power of its storms, the video leading this post shows the weather anchor, J.D. Rudd, of KSN, in the process of updating his viewers. Unfortunately, the storm was close enough to the station, and it forced those inside to head for the tornado shelter, including the aforementioned Rudd, who, again, was live on-air at the time.

During the video, you can here someone off-camera yell, ““It appears that it is time for all of us to get to shelter. Get to shelter right now! Everybody, let’s go!” The result was reminiscent of an apocalyptic movie that shows an abandoned television broadcast, all in an effort to drive the desolation home. The difference is, this was actually real.

Over at his Twitter, Rudd has received a great many well-wishing tweets and folks acknowledging the fine job they did under such pressure. Rudd also pointed out an extended version of the lead video.

It appears a clip from our coverage Sunday has gone viral, as they say. Here is a longer version that was sent to me: youtube.com/watch?v=4sOyn2…

Because of the destruction in Oklahoma and the Midwest in general, it’s pretty clear Rudd has been incredibly busy trying to keep his viewers informed and hopefully, safe. The ordeal has, understandably, worn on Rudd:

After the last few days, I am going to go home & just disconnect from things for a while. Got a feeling more bad wx will hit OK/AR tomorrow.